The Two Conversations Your Team Needs Right Now

I want to talk specifically about what great leadership communication looks like during a reorg — because most leaders get this wrong in two opposite directions.

Some leaders over-communicate the wrong things. They share their own anxiety, their speculation about what’s going to happen, their frustration with the process. That’s not communication. That’s downloading.

Other leaders go quiet. They wait until they have complete information before saying anything. Which means their team gets nothing for weeks while the anxiety compounds.

What works is in the middle — and it requires two types of intentional communication.

The first is what I call the Over-Communication Principle. Here’s the principle: in the absence of information, people don’t assume everything is fine. They assume the worst. Every day your team doesn’t hear from you, they’re generating their own narrative. And that narrative is almost never the optimistic one.

The practice is simple: communicate what you know, what you don’t know, and what you’re doing about the uncertainty. Not once — regularly. More often than feels comfortable. Because the moment it feels like you’re over-communicating is usually when your team is starting to feel adequately informed.

I coached a director through a significant reorg last year. Her natural style was to wait until she had clarity before communicating. During the first two weeks of the uncertainty, she said almost nothing. Her team’s anxiety went through the roof. People were taking hallway conversations as data points. Someone almost left.

We shifted her practice. Weekly five-minute updates. Here’s what I know. Here’s what I’m still working to understand. Here’s what I’m doing. That’s it. The anxiety dropped almost immediately. Not because the uncertainty was resolved. Because the team felt led.

The second conversation is the retention conversation — and it’s one-on-one.

Every leader has a handful of people they genuinely cannot afford to lose. During a reorg, those people are evaluating their options more actively than the leader usually realizes. The worst thing a leader can do is assume that strong performance together is communication enough.

The retention conversation is proactive, specific, and personal. It sounds something like: “I want to make sure you know I’m aware of everything that’s happening around us, and I’m genuinely invested in you being here on the other side of this. What do you need from me right now?”

That question does something the group communication can’t do. It makes someone feel individually seen. Not as a resource. As a person whose continuation matters specifically.

I’ve had leaders tell me that conversation was the first time they’d ever been directly asked that question by their manager. Think about what that means.

Most leaders wait for their best people to tell them they’re at risk. The best leaders go first. They have the conversation before there’s any indication that they need to.

Two questions to close: How recently have you communicated with your whole team about the uncertainty — specifically, directly, and with enough substance to make them feel led? And who are the two or three people you need to have a direct retention conversation with this week?

Don’t wait for them to come to you.